The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde

by Holland, Merlin

• ISBN13: 9780007156641
• ISBN10: 0007156642
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-10-16
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

<p>London's Central Criminal Court Sessions Papers for April 1895 were blunt, declaring that "the details of this case are unfit for publication." The case was Oscar Wilde's first trial, a libel action brought against the Marquess of Queensberry for publicly calling him a homosexual. What unfolded in the court was one of Victorian London's most infamous scandals: the great, doomed love affair between Wilde and Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas, the Marquess's son. When it became public, it cost Wilde everything.</p><p>Merlin Holland, Wilde's grandson and a noted researcher and archivist, has discovered the original transcript of the trial that led to his grandfather's tragedy. Here for the first time is the true, uncensored record, free of the distortions and censorship of previous accounts.</p><p>On 18 February 1895, Bosie's father delivered a note to the Albemarle Club addressed to "Oscar Wilde posing as a somdomite [sic]." With Bosie's encouragement, Wilde decided to sue the Marquess for libel. As soon as the trial opened, London's literary darling was at the center of the greatest scandal of his time.</p><p>Wilde's fall from grace was swift: having lost this case, he was in turn prosecuted and later imprisoned. Bankrupted, he fled to Paris never to see his family again. Within five years he was dead, his health never having recovered from the years in Reading gaol.</p><p>This remarkable book reveals Wilde on trial for his life, though he did not know it -- his confidence ebbing under the relentless cross-questioning, the wit for which he was so celebrated gradually deserting him under the remorseless scrutiny. The tragic climax falls when Wilde is betrayed by his own cleverness, unconsciously playing into the prosecutor's hands. With that his cause is lost.</p>

Author Biography

Merlin Holland is Oscar Wilde's only grandson. He has been researching Wilde's life for the last twenty years

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Foreword	p. xi
Introduction	p. xv
The First Magistrates' Court Proceedings 2nd March 1895	p. 1
The Second Magistrates' Court Proceedings 9th March 1895	p. 7
Regina (Oscar Wilde) v. John Douglas 3rd-5th April 1895	p. 25
Wednesday Morning 3rd April
Sir Edward Clarke's Opening Speech for the Prosecution	p. 26
Evidence of Sidney Wright	p. 43
Evidence of Oscar Wilde	p. 45
Edward Carson's Cross-examination of Oscar Wilde	p. 64
On Lord Alfred Douglas	p. 64
On The Chameleon	p. 66
On The Picture of Dorian Gray	p. 77
Wednesday Afternoon 3rd April
On The Picture of Dorian Gray (cont.)	p. 80
On the Stolen Letters	p. 103
On Alfred Wood	p. 111
On William Allen	p. 126
On Robert Cliburn	p. 128
On Edward Shelley	p. 134
On Alfonso Conway	p. 143
Thursday Morning 4th April
Edward Carson's Cross-examination of Oscar Wilde (cont.)
On Alfred Taylor	p. 152
On Charles Parker	p. 162
On Frederick Atkins	p. 182
On Ernest Scarfe	p. 197
On Sydney Mavor	p. 200
On Walter Grainger	p. 206
Sir Edward Clarke's Re-examination of Oscar Wilde
On Lord Queensberry's Letters	p. 213
On Edward Shelley	p. 227
Thursday Afternoon 4th April
On Edward Shelley (cont.)	p. 230
On the Other Young Men	p. 237
On Lord Queensberry	p. 242
Edward Carson's Opening Speech for the Defence	p. 249
Friday Morning 5th April
Edward Carson's Opening Speech for the Defence (cont.)	p. 273
The Withdrawal of the Prosecution	p. 280
Appendix A	p. 285
Appendix B	p. 294
Notes	p. 298
Bibliography and Manuscript Sources	p. 327
Acknowledgements	p. 332
Index	p. 335
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde
The First Uncensored Transcript of The Trial of Oscar Wilde vs. John Douglas (Marquess of Queensberry), 1895

Foreword

Libel actions are meant to be cases for re-establishing reputations,confounding malicious gossip and allowing the litigant to emergein a state of unblemished purity. Anyone contemplating such litigationshould be warned that those who start libel actions oftenemerge with their reputations in tatters and, on two notableoccasions, end up in prison. Lord Jeffrey Archer and most famousof them all, Oscar Wilde found the entrance to the libel court adirect path to gaol.

Indeed, the steps that led from Wilde's charge against theMarquess of Queensberry to hard labour have a sickening inevitabilityabout them. Wilde's conduct through the three trials thatfollowed seems like a deliberate exercise in self-destruction. Thepublic drama was activated by Queensberry leaving a note atthe Albemarle Club addressed to 'Oscar Wilde posing somdomite[sic]'. (It is interesting to see what variations the word gained inthese proceedings; Edward Carson, Wilde's cross-examiner, calledHuysmans's À Rebours a 'sodomitical' book.) The reaction of anysensible man to the note would have been to take the advice ofthe majority of Wilde's friends, which was to tear it up and forgetit. The way to disaster was to start a private prosecution forcriminal libel. The charge necessarily called for the defence ofjustification. From then on it was Wilde, and not his enemy theMarquess of Queensberry, who was on trial, and he had laid himselfopen to every form of attack. There were no QueensberryRules.

Throughout these ghastly events Oscar's wife, Constance,behaved impeccably. Wilde was a devoted and loving father,although he left his sons, Vyvyan and Cyril Holland, a lifetime ofconcealment and embarrassment. In a book that adds considerably to our knowledge of his grandfather's trials, Vyvyan's son, MerlinHolland, has filled in the many gaps left in Montgomery Hyde'sedition in the 'Notable British Trials' series. We can now liveagain through the extraordinary drama of the aborted prosecutionof Queensberry and watch Oscar, the great dramatist, elegant ina black frock coat, leaning across the rail of the witness box,uttering wonderful but occasionally fatal answers: even as he isearning the audience's applause for his greatest flights of fancy,he is being led inexorably by the dogged persistence of his cross-examiner,Edward Carson, towards the prison gates.

Merlin Holland has published, for the first time, further passagesof the cross-examination. We now know what Carson thoughtof Huysmans' 'sodomitical' book, and we get a full account of thefascinating exchange. We also have a full text of the evidence inthe magistrate's court and Carson's excellent opening speech forthe defence. As a full record of these tragic judicial proceedings,it will not only be of use to future historians and scholars but toall of us who love, admire and are fascinated by this extraordinarilybrilliant, lovable and self-destructive genius.

The Criminal Law Amendment Act that forbade indecentconduct, short of penetration between men, under which Wildewas finally convicted, had only been passed some ten years earlierand was rightly known as a 'Blackmailer's Charter'. At his subsequenttrials Wilde was faced with the evidence collected byQueensberry's defence team for the first trial. This was mostlyabout limited sexual activity with various consenting rent boys,and a heavy cloud of blackmail hung around the proceedings.(It is now revealed that one significant blackmailing letter was,unwisely, put in evidence by Wilde's prosecuting counsel, althoughthe defence knew nothing of it). The amount of evidence againstWilde was overwhelming, as he must have known when he firsttold his solicitor that there was no truth in Queensberry's claims.

That he, on that fatal afternoon, as he admitted later, sat lyingto a lawyer, was a fact he tended to blame on Bosie, who hadlonged for a fight to the death against his savage and eccentricfather. As Merlin Holland says, the question we would all haveliked to ask Oscar was, 'Why on earth did you do it?' Was itanother case of the destruction of an older man by an obsession with a young lover? Did he somehow feel that his huge successhad become unbearable and want to destroy it? Was he attractedby the danger of lying and thought he could get away with it it?Or was he, as I believe, a confused and kindly man who did notthink, as we would not think nowadays, that he had done anythingwrong and that he could rely on his irresistible charm, and histalent for finding clever answers to tricky questions to see himthrough? If this was so, he was horribly mistaken.

There is a story about Oscar Wilde that, I think, should alwaysbe remembered. His friend Helena Sickert's father had died andher mother, grief stricken and inconsolable, had shut herself awayin her room and vowed that she would see no one. Wilde calledand, insisting on seeing the mother, he got her to open her doorto him. An hour, two hours passed and Helena waited for theinevitable tears and demands to be left alone. Then she heard anunbelievable sound; her mother was laughing. Wilde had entertainedher, had pleased her, had made her feel that life was stillworth living. He showed, in that and many other cases, that charmworks wonders.

It did not, in the end, work down at the Old Bailey. Perhapsit caused the jury in his first criminal trial to disagree; but then,when any merciful prosecutor or Home Secretary might havedecided that he had suffered enough, it let him down badly andhe was finally convicted.

Passing the ridiculous sentence of two years' hard labour, MrJustice Wills said that men who could do as Oscar Wilde did were'dead to all sense of shame'.

The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde
The First Uncensored Transcript of The Trial of Oscar Wilde vs. John Douglas (Marquess of Queensberry), 1895. Copyright © by Merlin Holland. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

---

Excerpted from The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde: The First Uncensored Transcript of the Trial of Oscar Wilde vs. John Douglas (Marquess of Queensberry) 1895 by Merlin Holland
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.